King et les otages (Aredit comic)/plot
The main difference between King of the Commandos and the adaptation in King et les otages is in the role of the Owl. Marcelle Rochet does not appear at all and it is the Owl who takes over her role. He becomes the nephew of Gaston Boulanger. Apart from that, most of the plot is fairly close to the original. Le Mans Gimlet and co. are at the hideout of the Grey Fleas in the forest of Caen. Gimlet is busy planning his next phase of his operation, the rescue of the internees at Chateaudun. The Owl comes back from his hometown of Le Mans with some bad news: his uncle Gaston Boulanger has been called up to do forced labour in Germany. Gimlet agrees to help Owl's uncle. Kitted out in civilian clothes, they take a train (not a barge) to Le Mans. Like in the original, they knock at Gaston's shop and a neighbour tells him the Germans have moved the date forward and Gaston has gone to the assembly area. They fetch Gaston, sabotage the convoy of lorries and make their escape with a touring car headed towards Chateaudun, throwing off pursuers with bags of nails. Chateaudun Gimlet sends Gaston and Owl to Caen where they would rendzvous later. Cub is arrested in the town and the rest of the team meets Father Edwinus. The main deviation is that Cub is directly questioned by Hauptmann von Roth. Von Roth produces a witness to identify him but it is not Bertrand Dacosta (who does not appear). It is an unnamed old woman from Le Mans who had seen Cub and the rest from her window fronting the Place des Jacobins. Cub is locked in the tower where he signals Gimlet. The rest of the rescue proceeds as in the original except that the operation seems to start in the open and not from cottages by the chateau fence. The arrow is shot into the tower, the rope is pulled in, and Gimlet ascends. The prisoners are collected and led down the tower. Father Edwinus shelters them for a while in the church while they wait for Gimlet. The scene where Cub overhears German soldiers discussing Bertrand Dacosta's betrayal and the trap that the Gestapo was setting up in Paris is not depicted. Instead, Gimlet, from a window, overhears von Roth on the phone telling someone named Kessler about this. Gimlet breaks in but does not shoot him, he merely knocks him out and ties him up. Gimlet rejoins the others. He and Trapper spot a German soldier with a lorry and attempt to hold him up to seize his transport. But it's Copper! The party piles into the vehicle and they head for Paris. On the way, Copper recounts his adventure in stealing the lorry (Chapter XVI in the original). Paris Unlike the original, Gaston and Owl are set to arrive at Gare d'Austerlitz and not Quai d'Orsay. But the rest of the rescue takes place in the same way. Cub attracts Gaston and Owl's attention and leads them to a sidestreet. Here the Gestapo men who are following are attacked. In a slight deviation, they are bundled into the lorry, tied up and dropped off at a deserted place outside Paris. Gimlet leaves a "K" visiting card in the hat of one of the Gestapo agents. The stop at General Romortin's house in the Bois de Boulogne for him to retrieve certain important documents is not depicted. Fleury The party heads from Fleury and stop at an inn run by Freddie. The town name is not mentioned in the original story, and in this adaptation, the inn is not named as "Cheval Noir". The lorry is disposed of in the same way, but Charles, Freddie's assistant, does not appear. There is an additional embellishment where Freddie has to go off to borrow a landing field from his neighbour Bertrand because such a large party requires a Liberator and the field near the inn is usable only by small aircraft. Bertrand agrees to move his cattle and clear the field. The party is taken by to England by a Liberator aircraft but there is no suggestion that the plane is crewed by Biggles and Ginger. Nor does an escort of Hawker Typhoons show up. Category:Plot summaries (derivative works)